Last week, my wife and I traveled to Maine to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. Several weeks before we traveled, we made some telephone calls to find a motel room and make a reservation. The motel asked us to send along a check for the first night’s stay as a deposit to guarantee our room would be available to us. The day before we traveled, we got our suitcases out, checked the weather forecast, and began to select the clothes we wanted to take with us. On the morning we departed for Maine, we put the address of the motel into our GPS to alert us should there be any traffic accidents arise that could delay our arrival. We took all these steps because we wanted to know there was a place for us, that the journey would be guided, and that our days in Maine would be pleasant.
What I have described is not novel or unique. I am sure all of you have taken similar measures before you traveled on vacation whether it was to Maine, across the country, or overseas. The point of my story is that to go just a few hundred miles for just a few days we will do a lot of thinking and put a lot of effort in our preparation for those few miles and few days. Yet, millions of people willingly give no thought to their preparations for eternity. They are willing to leave their destination, their journey, and the pleasantness of that destination all to chance.
I remember hearing a story about a tombstone in a cemetery in Indiana that is more than 100 years old with the following inscription on it:
Pause stranger when you pass me by,
As you are now - so once was I.
As I am now - so you will be,
Prepare yourself to follow me.
There was, however, a note that someone added that read:
To follow you - I am not content
Until I know which way, you went.
You are here today because you have decided not to leave to chance your destiny for eternity, the journey, and whether your destination will be a pleasant experience. You are unwilling to follow anyone unless you know which way they went. Because you are here today, you are seeking to “Be Prepared.”
Be Prepared might be a good motto for the Christian Church. It is the motto for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts, said “Be Prepared,” means that you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty. For the Christian, to “Be Prepared,” is much more about spiritual preparedness.
Throughout time, God has dealt with humanity in two stages. There is always a time of preparation and a time of fulfillment. The Christian Bible is composed of two stages. We see the Old Testament as preparation, a revelation of God in the form of prophesies and promises. The New Testament we see as the fulfillment of God’s preparations for humanity. What is the promise and what is the fulfillment? God embodied both promise and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ.
In our Old Testament reading today, we experienced the sense of preparation. The psalmist wrote: “10 Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. 11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. 12 The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. 13 Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps” (Psalm 85:10-13).
The days of preparation were intended to bring together the marriage of power spiritual emotions. Love and faithfulness would come together as though being married. Similarly, righteousness and peace would embrace and kiss as mutual lovers. Faithfulness would be expressed by those of the earth and righteousness would come from heaven. The will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. The uniting of humanity and the divine would be very much like a blessed marriage. These things would all come to pass by God, and he would call them good.
This goodness, the coming together of love, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace, God’s promise, was expressed in many ways throughout the Old Testament. God was promising and preparing his people to receive him in the most intimate and personal way. The way God chose to fulfill his promise was by coming as righteousness in human form through his son, Jesus.
Now, to receive God in person was a radical change in God’s revelation to humanity. And to prepare the people for the change, God commissioned a radical person named John to make known God’s coming.
We heard John’s call this morning in our first New Testament reading. Matthew wrote, “1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 3 This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’” (Matthew 3:1-3).
God’s message through John was simple, “Repent.” To repent is an act of preparation. Repentance, getting rid of those things that keep us from God, prepares us to be filled by God’s presence. We can think of many things, many sins, that keep us from God. But the chief thing, the chief sin, among all those that keep people from God is pride.
Pride was the chief element of the first sin. The first couple believed that eating the fruit they had been commanded not to eat would make them like God. Pride includes the desire to be as God. Christian writer Andrew Murray opined that, “All the wretchedness of which this world has been the scene, all its wars and bloodshed among the nations, all its selfishness and suffering, all its vain ambitions and jealousies, all its broken and embittered lives, with all its daily unhappiness, have their origin in what this cursed pride – our own or that of others – has brought upon us.”
So, in John’s day, to acquire and imitate the radical love of Jesus required preparation, namely giving up prideful thoughts and belief that people really knew God. Matthew reported that, “5 People went out to him [John] from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River” (Matthew 3:5-6).
Average people in great numbers responded to John’s call to prepare themselves for Jesus. Those people expressed their preparation by confessing their sins privately to God and then were baptized publicly before other people. Both the confession and the baptism evidence the person being serious about their preparations for eternity. The confession and baptism evidenced a person spiritually prepared to know God.
In our day, to acquire and imitate the radical love of Jesus requires preparation, namely giving up prideful thoughts and belief that we really know God. The acts of preparation remain the same as those in John’s day. We are called to repent, talk to God and rid ourselves of pride and come into agreement with God about what we must change in our life. And then, just as in John’s day, our preparation includes being baptized before others. Both acts of preparation, repentance and baptism, say to God and others, “God, I am ready to receive whatever You have for me.”
Now in John’s day, not everyone who had an interest in God or in what God had in mind, were willing to prepare themselves. They were neither willing to repent and speak to God nor were they willing to be baptized as a sign of preparation. In the Gospel of Matthew, we would read, “7 But when he [John] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he [John] was baptizing, he [John] said to them: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire’” (Matthew 3:7-10).
The Pharisees and Sadducees were proud of their association with God and the Jerusalem Temple. They were too proud to be prepared to receive someone as radical as Jesus. They were too proud to talk to God and confess their frailties to God. They were too proud to be baptized before others as evidence of their need for God and their release of pride to receive him.
Jesus would later tell a parable of two men who went to the synagogue to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. “11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:11-14). You can hear the pride in the Pharisee and the repentance in the tax collector.
We must not be too proud to talk to God and we must not be too proud to be baptized before others. In my own faith journey, I walked a long time before I came into agreement with God on my need to be baptized. I urge you not to make the same error I did. We are talking about our journey for all eternity.
For that journey Jesus said choose to be baptized as a way of expressing before all humanity that you seek me. If you have never personally chosen to be baptized, please talk to me. I know this church would welcome an opportunity to gather many together and express the joy of being baptized into Christ.
For baptism is a symbolic union of humanity and the divine. It is the chief moment when we can see and experience the promise and fulfillment in the marriage of love, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace. I call it a marriage because in baptism we are expressing our preparation to become fully one with Christ through the Church.
The Apostle Paul would express this human/divine union in his letter to the church at Ephesus. Paul wrote, “31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32). Paul saw the coming together into the church in marital terms in which the husband and wife became one. The groom, Paul saw, represented Jesus and the bride represented the Church with its many members.
Marriage is a good way to look at preparation to receive Jesus and follow him into eternity. We do not experience the deepest joys of marriage by keeping our fingers crossed ready to run if things start to fail. We experience the deepest joys of marriage when we commit ourselves without reservation with a “for better or worse” attitude. The same principle holds true when we commit ourselves to Jesus and follow him without reservation.
Following Jesus as he leads us into abundant life now and into eternity requires that we keep track of what we are doing. We need to have a spiritual GPS. Look for example of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Jesus loved them and they knew Jesus well. Luke shared with us that, “38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ 41 ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her’” (Luke 8:38-42).
I believe Luke included this short story to help those who believe in Jesus to exercise care in the continuing activities to follow Jesus. Martha, seeking to serve Jesus and his followers, became mired in meal preparations. Luke’s description gives us a sense that Martha was running frantically from the cook fire to the table and then to the bread oven.
Martha was probably sweating physically and sweating within herself with anxiousness trying to complete all of the meal preparations so that everything would be perfect for everyone. Martha was following the approach that busyness is a sign of commitment. There are certain occasions when busyness is a sign of commitment but more often busyness is a sign of avoiding going deeper.
Referring again to the marriage example, many marriages fail when the children leave the home because the marriage became about busyness of the children and not something deeper.
In contrast to Martha, her sister Mary was seated at the feet of Jesus. Mary was not content to just be in the room with Jesus, she wanted to be as physically close to Jesus as possible. Mary too was preparing, only Mary’s preparations were to receive all she was able to absorb from Jesus. Mary was committed to Jesus for better or worse and was working hard on the marriage of the human and the divine. Jesus told Martha and those present that Mary had chosen the better thing and it would not be taken from her.
We are on a journey. Like every journey, preparations are needed to make sure that there is room for us and that our time on the journey and at our destination will be pleasant. You are here as part of your work of preparation. But as in all preparations, there is a purpose to them.
What is God preparing you and asking you to prepare for? Talk to him about it. Get a sense of where God is leading you this moment in your life. If some of your preparations are incomplete, don’t panic. Complete what God has asked. Do not be too proud. Afterall, you are entering a marriage of the human and the divine that will last forever. This is the best thing there is and it will not be taken from you. Amen and Amen.